New Client Engagement Manager gets on the road

Client Engagement Manager Kris Schneider has made her first road trip to visit customer sites, and says two common themes emerged in terms of what customers wanted to discuss.

Kris recently spent two days in Hamilton meeting with customers, and says the majority of them wanted to talk about Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or software upgrades – and sometimes both.

“Several customers were interested in CRM – mainly to improve management of their sales pipeline,” she says. Requests for CRM demos were common.

“The other thing people wanted to talk about was EXO upgrades. More than half of the customers I visited were interested in an upgrade. Some haven’t upgraded for a few years, and are now thinking about purchasing a CRM system. They will definitely need to upgrade Exo before implementing CRM. Other customers are planning to replace old PCs, which again requires an Exo upgrade because very old versions of Exo can’t run on the new 64-bit PCs.”

Kris says some customers had forgotten that their annual license fee entitles them to receive the latest Exo software version at zero cost.

“Your annual license fee does more than just give you continuous use of the software. It entitles you to receive new versions at no charge. All you pay for is the consulting time necessary to install it,” she says.

This consultancy cost varies from customer to customer, depending on the complexity of the site.

“If you upgrade frequently it’s less disruptive, and will involve less time and cost. If you are using a very old version, an upgrade will involve a bigger technological leap and can require more consulting time. More frequent upgrades also mean the customer is able to take advantage of new features sooner. We recommend that upgrades should occur at least once a year.”

Kris says she’s pleased that 100% of the mature customer sites she visited spoke highly of the quality of the support they received from Enprise. The lion’s share of support was provided remotely, with smaller amounts of onsite support as needed.

“The long term customers were highly complimentary about the quality and timeliness of the support they are getting from Enprise – and the calibre of the staff providing that support – which is very pleasing to hear.”

Kris says she’s planning to take road trips on a regular basis, and to get out to other regions apart from Auckland and Hamilton.

“It’s a great thing to be able to sit down face to face with customers, it’s the first stage in building a relationship,” she says.

“By getting to know what they’re thinking and what’s happening in their business, I can be a more effective advocate for them.”